The Scoop

The Scoop

There is something the internet is foundering and that something is in danger of being destroyed. There is a movement, someone (me) might call it 'Technological Socialism' or TS, well lets stay away from 'TS' since it has an alternate meaning. This techno soc (pronounced: tek no' so' sh) it is an idea fostered by most individuals and discouraged by large organizations. Kind of a strange dichotomy since large corporations are made up of individuals but that is not uncommon, think mob mentality. The idea of things being created for the betterment of the community, things like Linux that allow the collective to make recommendations and update.

But I think even more important to the future of this cause are things like the Creative Commons. Things like large newspaper chains moving to the Creative Commons form of content ownership. Either way you have to take a side, at least at some point, as of right now I am still undecided as to whether this is ultimately a good thing. Yes there will be more news if it is generated by the people, but at the same time will there then be too much news? Will it turn people from interested to apathetic? The idea of a few people owning all the media is also not the answer.

The point of this is that things like this. Are bad for both sides. Detailing events around the publishing of a story about the Rare founders leaving the company Luke Smith of 1up wrote of the event and included a quote that said the split had nothing to do with recent sales figures.

The IGN story came much later and even though under the news section had reached it's own conclusion despite there being primary source material to the contrary and nothing but their opinion backing there account. But Journalism 101 is not the point, the point is that even though the story came out a full day before on 1up and the original included a quote from one of the parties involved IGN decided to run their own story ignoring that they had taken it from elsewhere.

What this does to our two models, the Current and the Techno Soc, is it works to damage both. In the Techno Soc model a small line saying where the original story came from, in this case 1up, leads to the destruction of the system. No one wants to write the story if it can be copied and profited upon without due payed to the originator. Then people protect their content and it moves back to the current system. A simple way to think of it is if I were the editor of a regular newspaper and ran across an AP story that I really like, I can't simply rewrite the story and give myself the byline. Trust would be loss, AP would eventually figure it out and then legal action would be taken. The Lawyers involved would make a lot of money, but otherwise everyone would lose, the AP would look litigious and the infringer would look deceitful.

Whether you are a staunch capitalist or a Technological Socialist there should be agreement that things like this help no one.